We Have Never Seen Something Like This

We Have Never Seen Something Like This
E HAVE
NEVER
SEEN
SOMETHING
LIKE THIS
Poems by members of the
Roundhouse Poetry Collective
2019 – 2021
1

We Have Never Seen Something Like This
WE HAVE
NEVER SEEN
SOMETHING
LIKE THIS
Poems by members of the
Roundhouse Poetry Collective
2019 – 2021
March 2021
2

We Have Never Seen Something Like This
We Have Never Seen Something Like This
Contents
About the Roundhouse Poetry Collective 5
Foreword 6
You try to tidy your room one Saturday
by Helen Bowell 8
Before the Whitewash by Abena Essah Bediako 10
Calico by Troy Cabida 12
I am once again going to the big Sainsbury’s
just to feel something by Connor Byrne 13
How You Wear the Word by Courtney Conrad 14
Celebrity Chef by Rosanna Hildyard 15
In other news by Oakley Flanagan 16
At up by Kirk-Ann Roberts 17
Calcium Surplus by Niamh Haran 18
Baby takes my daylight and sicks on it
by Jacob Constable 19
About the Roundhouse
Poetry Collective
The Roundhouse Poetry Collective is formed of a
group of young writers and poets aged 18-25 who
meet weekly to create, experiment and develop their
craft, under guidance from established and
celebrated poets.
This year’s cohort were led by journalist and writer
Bridget Minamore and spoken word poet and
performer Cecilia Knapp. Due to the pandemic and
the national lockdown in the UK, sessions came to
a temporary pause in March 2020 and resumed
online from October 2020. Despite the challenges of
an unprecedented year, the collective have stayed
supportive of one another and have collaborated
digitally to produce this very special collection
of their work.
Fragments of my mother’s homeland underwater
by Natalie Linh Bolderston 20
a nude from the bathtub by miracle 24
me too. me, too. by Shanay Neusum-James 25
floodwater/ Qardho or I was drowning, I wasn’t
by Samantar Osman 26
Tommy Builds A Cocktail
by Peter deGraft-Johnson, ‘The Repeat Beat Poet’ 28
Self Portrait as Elle Woods by Esme Allman 29
Saudades by Nailah Dossa 30
Black boys can’t swim? I guess by Tanaka Fuego 32
Poet biographies 34
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We Have Never Seen Something Like This
We Have Never Seen Something Like This
Foreword
We are so happy to be able to write this Foreword,
and we are similarly delighted that there will be a
place where people can read the compelling, playful,
innovative, joyful, honest and moving poems created
over the last year by members of the Roundhouse
Poetry Collective – each of whom has such a distinct
and important voice.
When we sat down to shortlist for this year’s cohort,
way back in the summer of 2019, we were blown
away by the quality of writing we found in over 150
applications. We asked each other whether we would
ever be able to choose from such a varied group of
young writers; it took a long time, and a lot of thought,
but eventually we did. It’s testament to the talents of
the eighteen young writers we eventually settled on,
all of whom jumped out at us with both their stories
and their potential, that we knew each of them had
to be a part of that year’s Collective. Some we knew,
having seen or read their work in the poetry scene over
the years, while others we had never met or heard of
until their application. But all of them shone. Now, a
year and a half later, there is not one member of the
Collective whose voice is not missed when they’re
not in the room.
a guest tutor, or read and perform to crowds large and
small, pride continues to swell in our chests. We are
certain this will only continue as their writing continues
to go from strength to strength.
Esme, Abena, Natalie, Helen, Connor, Troy, Courtney,
Jacob, Oakley, Niamh, Rosanna, Shanay, PJ, Kirk-Ann,
Tanaka, miracle, Samantar, and Nailah, your talent and
drive, your kindness to each other’s writing, and your
kindness to each other (and us) has been beautiful
to watch.
It’s been an honour to spend all this time with your
words, and to help guide you through the last year –
it’s been an endless pleasure and a privilege to be the
tutors for the Roundhouse Poetry Collective. A special
thank you for always making us laugh – we’ll even miss
the (numerous) jokes at our expense, the ribbing at the
fact we’re ‘old’, and the amused but patient explainers
of slang terms.
We can’t wait to see where you go next, and we will
miss you all.
Cecilia Knapp & Bridget Minamore
Since September 2019, we have been writing together.
Co-Tutors of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective
Despite how tough 2020 was for everyone, despite
how tough 2021 continues to be, and despite having
to take a break while we all dealt with what was literally
an unprecedented situation, we have stuck together. In
one of our final online workshops together recently, we
were struck by how much their individual and unique
voices have grown, as well as their collective spirit:
they are a team. They support each other and they are
the definition of a writing community. We are endlessly
proud of them — they inspire us with their words and
with their spirit. When they share their early drafts with
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We Have Never Seen Something Like This
We Have Never Seen Something Like This
You try to tidy your room
one Saturday
You try to tidy your room one Saturday
but when you move the wardrobe to hoover,
you find a birthday card from your grandparents
who couldn’t speak English, six unused pencils
with HELEN on the side, a boiled red crab
that peels open its eyes and whispers,
“Good evening,” even though it’s just
gone midday, the plankton-eaten remains
of the whale that swam the Thames,
an empty bit of space that disappears
as soon as you touch it, both your parents,
as they looked in their wedding photo,
Mum in her puffy white sleeves and veil,
and Dad with his terrible moustache,
the blare of the fog horn from camp
that rattles every ornament in your room,
Mr Blobby, who rolls up off the ground
and waddles past your parents and the crab,
the grey cat you threw a Croc at for shitting
in your garden, and, look, a fresh turd too,
Lola who avoids your eye and says, “I’m going
to tell everyone what we did,” a Facebook message
from the girl you knew who got hit by a bus
and died, Percy Bysshe Shelley (he’s actually quite fit),
at the front door), your cousin’s comment
about ‘homosexuals’, a dry, persistent cough,
the tag that goes around Paddington’s neck
but with your name on it, four pubes and a lot of dust.
“You should clean more,” your mum shudders,
throwing her bouquet in the bin. “That’s disgusting.”
By Helen Bowell
followed by Charlotte’s pet terrapin Shelley
(who ran away, but was found, months later,
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We Have Never Seen Something Like This
We Have Never Seen Something Like This
Before The Whitewash
It is 1614
My spirit wakes in a femme’s body
Fingers laced with gold bands,
knuckles of the woman I love
She whistles my name so fluent
‘Me dɔ, Abena’
My valves forget their rhythm
Lips are warm on mine
Father greets my in laws with his right hand
No one casts stone cast to kill us
In this Ghana they are celebrating our union
Atoms in this skin begin to twitch
It is 1886 now
The land reeks of blood and honey
My new tongue curls to assert that I am
King Mwanga of Buganda
Before my brain can register
A plague is here, bleached men with Slave Bibles
Stripping our God Katonda from all that is sacred
For the first time, sodomy a third guest
as I make love to another man
My soul slips into 1634
The garments that clothe me bind the
lumps on my chest
Men in my harem wear soft beaded gowns,
they are my wives
Neck swivelling only to ‘Njola’
King Nzinga
Subject’s knees become prayer beds before me
As I sharpen swords to charge towards the Portuguese
Who drag my people like muck onto cargo ships
My soul is shifting again
“Relay my lineage to my beloved Angola
Where my body immortalised marble in the city centre
Yet I am dead named Queen”
Its 2020
Familiar cells
Gulping Mutwuo ne nkatenkwan
Father’s mouth a portal to a Ghana I never knew
But this Ghana is missing a chunk of its backbone
I make several attempts to tell my Father who I am
To tell him that we too wear white hooded gowns
As we mourn our black men
Yet kill our queer folk
With our own bare hands
Njola’s aura stays with me
Kisses the shaved sides of my boy cut
Their life a compass
Pointing me to Queer Africa
By Abena Essah Bediako
Njola pushes a plead into me
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We Have Never Seen Something Like This
We Have Never Seen Something Like This
Calico
A male calico cat is sitting inside a room
full of dogs. Easily he sees through
their hunger, their boisterous and barrier.
He wants to let them know
but the room’s already losing its sobriety,
so instead he paws his way out,
feels the needles gnawing at a bent leg
dissolve like bubbles.
Outside, he looks to the sky
for a fast wind to catch
more of the citrus sunshine
clinging onto a fading summer,
drops to the ground
any leftover sting like balls of quartz:
firming the first bounce,
the eventual shatter
By Troy Cabida
Written after Serendipity by BTS.
First published in War Dove by Bad Betty Press,
Spring 2020.
I am once again going to the big
Sainsbury’s just to feel something
I am buying expensive ketchup in order to properly love
you.
Do you remember when you leant over between me and
a hot
showerhead? You said you would kill me if I fucked up
your hair
and I believed you. I still did it. You still let me. I keep
my
butter in a butter dish in order to properly love you
I don’t eat butter. What body did we fry and salt?
Now I’m a want monster in the aisles. A want monster is
someone who licks everything, someone with brand
loyalty.
I notice the freezers are full of our faces. We showcase
an impressive range of emotions. Merger! Wow, I love
you
so much that we now share a face. Our teeth are your
dogteeth, our platinum hair, platinum. Do you remember
when you woke me pressing butter into my ear? We
were
so villainous. Here, get a prawn. In this bleachy superscape
there is no safe distance. All the headlines pretend they
know us.
(Man Kills Man In Dye Job Mishap). (Man Filmed
Assigning
Deeper Meaning). Get ready. I am bulk buying garlic for
my last
remaining violence. Let’s be real, I’m going to eat us
both.
By Connor Byrne
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We Have Never Seen Something Like This
We Have Never Seen Something Like This
How You Wear the Word
After Saeed Jones
You arrive, hair slicked back with amniotic gel,
parents lathering you in unrinseable letters.
You arrive, under stroller-dense maple trees,
life-size dolls playing infant-matchmakers.
You arrive, a starfish over the toilet,
eyes slicing your breasts by the sink.
You arrive, watching glitter-peacocks parading;
you stretch tears away, your uncertainty brimming.
You arrive via blackmail,
your mouth, a blow-dryer for bloody freckles.
You arrive, bending and straightening;
unclasping from old letters and gripping new ones.
You arrive, lightbulb derrières nestling on your cushion
thighs, your arms curling around them like a seatbelt.
Your mother arrives, disappointment re-figures and the
uncremating begins; you wish yourself unborn, less;
your body intact, your soul unburnable.
By Courtney Conrad
Celebrity Chef
Autumn is fruit not death, so I go swimming
to self-preserve for winter. In Brixton
there’s a leisure centre
where you can backstroke
four floors high.
I’m seeking love, who isn’t? I find it in sushi,
Christmas tree decorations, flesh
under my fingertips, the taste
of salt. If I feel sick,
I go swimming.
I enjoy travelling: Tokyo, Vienna,
petrol and sugar. I’ve tasted everything.
Each week, a man comes to photograph
my hairsprayed dishes, we joke about
McDonalds. Sometimes, he puts
the wrappers in my bin
before he leaves.
When I flew to Tokyo, I realised air
was just one more box of heat and fog;
still, I am untouched.
In my leisure time,
I go swimming.
Sometimes, I plunge my head
into the water; sometimes I want to plunge
my head into a wall. His photographs
are beautiful. I make too much.
It makes me sick. Autumn
is endless fruit.
By Rosanna Hildyard
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We Have Never Seen Something Like This
We Have Never Seen Something Like This
In other news
a woman lost her wedding ring and found it again
sixteen years later growing on a carrot inside her
garden the likeliest available explanation being
she must have removed the ring whilst peeling
the potatoes she was preparing for her husband’s
evening meal the bowl the potatoes were peeled
over must have been taken outside to the garden
upturned on a pile of rotting vegetables a compost
heap slowly turning the waste materials back into
generative forms of living matter the soil turning
the potato skins into some veritable good as they
broke down to create diverse kinds of plant life
during which time the woman’s marriage soured
bitter rows ever since she first lost the object of
her promise made suddenly visible again one day
in a sliver of orange she spotted from her kitchen
which made it look as if the ring was being worn
on a much thinner finger did rabbits begin to leap
about the compost heap proclaiming the document
of proof had risen the day her ring reappeared hey
presto instant as a parlour trick some declarative
statement carrot is the most affirming of vegetables
is the moral very clear now recycling is good good
things come to those who wait it’s depressing even
in nature the gilded path to desire is heterosexual
in terms like marriage gold wedding rings being
metonymic for what is sustainable what is good
for the planet in the way paper bags are not all that
better than plastic yet somehow remain blameless
and yes all my anger is being recapitulated through
another marriage story another absent husband
only present nominally I have been reading a lot
about homonormativity I have let the side down
for ever wanting my happily assimilated ever after
do all the queers die at the end from AIDS
At up
At the death of my grandmother’s husband
i danced in her ear she said you are happy
man i made it my duty to let love travel and
fill rooms told my mother i believe in true
love hugged her and said i’m sorry for
smoking weed but hug me back knocked
rum punch from my brothers hand
told him he is king didn’t need to fetch another
stood by drinking water the younger perched
in grandma’s walker are my blessings there
nothing but love on council estate reminiscing
uncles celebrating the deceased mortality means
make the most of moments no fear people end
Up throwing down dirt; you buried in a coffin.
By Kirk-Ann Roberts
By Oakley Flanagan
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We Have Never Seen Something Like This
calcium surplus
my index finger is milky green
from the ring you gave me
haven’t brushed our teeth
for two days and this is my only chance
to experience calcium surplus luckily
my sister gave us a seal bag
of toothpaste from her tube if that’s not
familial love I don’t know
what is but my love for you
is as thick as sun block as clear
as antihistamine perhaps the leaves
of those now dead plants you got me
mean something about nurturing the self
because I think I look after you just fine
By Niamh Haran
Baby takes my daylight
and sicks on it
When we play, we are cops and robbers;
I always catch him stealing time from me.
Energy. Most days I swallow its light ‘fore
his fingerless brioche fists close around it.
Walk away from baby in supermarkets to
teach him I will always come back. I will
always find him; know the sound of baby’s
cry against every other rugrat in the line-up.
With white sun in stomach I will starve baby
of each sumptuous sin I was raised on. Only
feed him things worth their weight in gold,
nothing heavier. Baby will be dirt poor in
paradise, where it matters little how you get
there. Pleasant prisons like these still have
inmates asking what you’re in for. Ghosts’
stories kill their heros. Hope my baby’s okay.
By Jacob Constable
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We Have Never Seen Something Like This
We Have Never Seen Something Like This
Fragments of my mother’s
homeland underwater
Southern Vietnam will be submerged by 2050.
– Saigoneer, Oct 2019
Every place has a name for this.
Here, it is tận thế.
A fortune once told me that rain is worth everything
and so I knew that it held all we had ever burned –
pork skewers, begging letters, hell money,
my great-grandmother’s remains,
her son’s prepared flesh.
In monsoon season, they fused with everything we exhaled.
•
Once, Vietnamese people were said to be descended from
Âu Cơ, a fairy from the mountains,
and Lạc Long Quân, a dragon from the sea.
When their forms touched sand, one hundred children
climbed out from black eggs.
•
When the land disappeared,
we poured our ancestors’ ashes into Aquafina bottles,
let them live in the ghost of our thirst.
•
Once, we planted peach trees for Tết,
planned to chop and sour the fruit in jars.
Once, the sun slipped so low
that every peach burst on our palms.
We stayed out until our hair singed,
watched black strands split into dust on the concrete.
•
Once, Âu Cơ and Quân spent too long away from home.
Quân tried to hold his human shape but could not stop
his tail from growing back.
Âu Cơ tried to cut off her wings and bled a typhoon.
•
Once, a river curdled
at the memory of splitting,
the toxins it was fed
still in the bodies of five generations.
In the bombed cities, waves pull apart reconstructions
of every holy building.
My mother does not cry
because she has already lived through this,
because home is swept away
every minute you’re not there.
I hear her voice bend open to red gas,
recede into her mother’s toothless murmurs
like names heard through snow.
When we are afraid, it no longer matters that we never learned
to fully understand each other.
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We Have Never Seen Something Like This
We Have Never Seen Something Like This
•
These days, we are meatless.
My mother still dreams of a pig
fat enough to feed us all for a month,
though we have long since lost our talent for slaughter.
•
Once, Quân threatened a flood so that the sea and land
might be joined.
•
Once, we wanted to believe that we’d survive the flood
because we were born from a collision of mountain
and sea.
Because nothing has ever held us
as closely as water.
By Natalie Linh Bolderston
First published in The Poetry Review, Winter 2019
Âu Cơ fled with half her children, taught them to plant
khoai lang in pockets of warm earth.
Quân carried away all who remained on his back, and
they lived as fishermen.
•
Once, there was nothing to hold onto
but the prayers that streaked from my mother’s mouth,
her belief that I would live longer if oiled and blessed,
that when she died, there would be someone left
to ask after her bones.
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We Have Never Seen Something Like This
a nude from the bathtub
self-portrait
i am without measurement
marooned; a piss puddle
of blue from a slanted
cock
pins and needles thread
wind and rain to my feet
haven’t left my bed in
yonks
assume the form
of flight; this is where
i land: in search of a
ruler
forgetting
god never used
straight lines
me too. me, too.
sometimes, i feel like lifting my arse in the air and
saying take it away, head bent back fingers splayed, i
was born with a placard in one hand,
i let my face do the rest. i lie in bed with empty
between my legs and hang it on the wall when i’m done
with it, open my barbies up real wide and stare to settle
the rocking in my hips, it’s comfort but it’s someone
else’s now. i say my name twice so it makes sense,
say it soft so they think about the gifts i came to give
the world, the truth in my breast milk for the diversity
campaign. they want one more analogy, use to believe
the more beautiful something was the less likely people
were to ruin it but then look what you did you made
them all pussies then you made them all pink. i am eyes
and gapped teeth and only one Scottish ancestor when
the lights go out i look down at smooth skin broken
by a rupture. i want to say something holy lies here try
not to let the sweetness spill can’t brace the shame of
packing it back inside. You want mess who’s hair tucks
neatly behind ears. You are starving children in Africa.
i am a soulja boy
comeback; i am
By Shanay Neusum-James
cain with the sleeves
of my morality
rolled up
staring life in the face
saying; what you want
some? you fucking want
some?
By miracle
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We Have Never Seen Something Like This
floodwater/Qardho or I was drowning, I wasn’t
(After Safia Elhilo)
I was drowning, I wasn’t. Warm and narked in my
western bed I scrolled to watch my city drown.
The houses washed away like the sandcastles of
my childhood. I saw my many faces. They prayed,
entered a void of silence, imitated the sun. I watched
from my phone. I wanted it, I didn’t. I questioned it,
I didn’t. My bordered body scrolled on. My hydrated
mouth spoke of the floodwater, they said it tasted like
the moon’s farewell. I looked for images, I didn’t. I should-
-’ve donated, I didn’t. I wanted to call, I didn’t. I watch-
-ed from oceans away. My teeth being washed away
by the rain. We have never seen something like this.
They have never seen something like this. What if I
am the floodwater? What if my rage is the rain trying to
wash the borders on my tongue. Am I wrong for
dreaming in another world? Is the floodwater my
punishment to dream left and not right? They lost
homes, I didn’t, they lost photos and beds to sleep
with the indigo sky, I didn’t. I moved on, they didn’t.
I am dry, and they are still drowning. They say the
city will never be the same again. They say the city
will wear a different tomorrow. What if the floodwater
washed my name away from their mouths? What if
tomorrow makes them forget me. They prayed, I
didn’t. They called God, I slept. The floodwater
cleansed them of my sorrows, my western sorrows.
Dissolved my stupid protest safe in my citizenship.
Washed my tongue of the heavy words I mustn’t
wear. I liked their posts to soothe my floating back. I
reposted their sinking clothes to hang mine dry. I saw
their faces dampened in my mouth. They moved on,
I didn’t. They shored to new living rooms. I am still
lost. Sailing in search of my sinking body. I try to
archive their words from the videos. In hopes it
catches my body in the ocean. They survived, I didn’t.
Moved to new homes, I didn’t. The city stayed, I was
washed out to the desert. My many faces cocooned
to dry. It is clear, the floodwater washed everything
heavy from their hands and out to the quiet. Though
ringing misery leaves wet a trail, it doesn’t lead to them.
They ate, I didn’t. They were rebuilt, I wasn’t. They sang,
I sunk into the wallowing void. They harvested, I never
planted. One of my faces said on a video despite our
hardship, the water knows its destination. God knew
who’s time it was. The floodwater came for them, I didn’t.
God called on them, I didn’t. Who’s city am I, if the flood-
-water didn’t drum my words to dry my better bodies?
By Samantar Osman
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Tommy Builds A Cocktail
Tommy spied a sun-dried palm tree in an untouched garden
with crusty dark skin and cracks riddling
all along its side, weeping out of its shell
he aimed for a branch and down a coconut fell
it didn’t implode on impact or split in his grip
he had to kick it along the cobblestone path
drag the shell across a pebble-dashed wall
and hook up the jet-powered sandblaster.
Even a parade of lawnmower wheelies couldn’t shred it.
After the stalemate, Tommy retrained as a mercenary
infiltration demolitions counter-insurgency
and busted the shell wide open with a perfect salute
he chopped lime with a ceremonial sword
mixed barrel-aged rum with mashed mint in a Boston glass sliced
pineapples and sprinkled four sugar heaped spoonfuls on top and throttled
it all together before straining out any not quite pulverized pulp.
Tommy piled on crushed ice from the fridge dispenser
raked the evidence behind the second shed
and added red rose petals from the
planter on the roadside of the main drive
to garnish.
Self Portrait as Elle Woods
That part where I leave dinner ringless, mascara
streaming down my face. That part where I’m buoyant
boulders poking out my chest, deranged grin, held together
by a strappy pink bikini. Where I’m VHS soft porn. That part there.
That part when my costume is a sexy humiliation. That part where I do it
for the guy. When I do it not for that guy, for a different guy. Never for myself.
That part when I bend myself behind my back, and snap! myself in half so there’s enough
to go around. Where the beauty salon is an inferno, gossip whispers against raw
nailbeds fleshing our cuticles. That part where the hand lands on my thigh, late
evening gasp behind a closed office door. That part where my girls come
too, they’re there yapping and screaming, hand-bag dogs shushed
to quiet at the courthouse. That part where my hair is dumb silk,
catastrophic white girl. That part when I become beautiful.
By Esme Allman
By Peter deGraft-Johnson, ‘The Repeat Beat Poet’
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Saudades
For Nani
To be Mulher is to be mother of children’s children
Matriarch of steel spines
Mob wife
To run from home to make home
To get hair curled once a week and coloured every third Friday
To be Mulher is to sneak sweets in bedside drawers
To make camp in bathroom with phone cord trenches
Discuss ailments with friends like celebrity gossip
Laugh through your hands with flared nostrils
Decorative China
In the taste of matapha
And the call to prayer
To be mulher is to matter
To leave people in pieces
Struggling to stitch ourselves whole again
By Nailah Dossa
To be Mulher is to cultivate life
In the garden, kitchen and corners of your granddaughters
It is leaving behind
An empty hollow that is sneaking reminder of loss
It is coming home to find that home was a person, not a place
To be Mulher is to be bilingual nomad
To combine continents into well-travelled country
To fight for love and take flight for it
And dole affection out like fateha
To be Mulher is play Indian classics on Sunday mornings
Still dance at 70
To spice food with ancestors guidance
To Make sure your family eats
To Take concern when they don’t
To Become a living ghost whose recipes cannot be recreated
To be mulher is to smell of earth and Chanel n.5
To grow own tomatoes
It is to live on in pictures
In the smell of grass after it rains
In dressers full of prescriptions
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Black boys can’t swim? I guess
I sea the blue
The blue sees me
We have a tug of war
On who should harvest the wind
I lose.
Cause what’s new
A black boy
Surrendering to nature
As always
By Tanaka Fuego
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Poet biographies
Esme Allman is a multidisciplinary
artist who is a poet,
theatre-maker and facilitator
based in South East London. Her
work explores history, blackness,
memory and the ways these
themes interact with one another.
She has been commissioned by
Sydenham Arts, BBC Sounds and ICA New Creatives
Commission, Barbican Centre’s New Creatives:
Subject to Change and English Heritage. Her work
has appeared in POSTSCRIPT, The Colour of Madness
anthology, the Barbican Young Poets 19/20 Anthology
and The Skinny. She is a poet on Barbican Young Poets
and Roundhouse Poetry Collective.
Natalie Linh Bolderston is a
Vietnamese-Chinese-British
poet. In 2020, she received an
Eric Gregory Award and cowon
the Rebecca Swift Women
Poets’ Prize. Her pamphlet, The
Protection of Ghosts, is published
with V. Press. Find Natalie on
Instagram: @NatalieLinhBolderston and Twitter:
@NatBolderston
Helen Bowell is a poet and
producer. She is a co-founder of
Dead [Women] Poets Society, and
an alumna of The Writing Squad,
the London Writers Awards and
the London Library Emerging
Writers scheme. She won a Bronze
Creative Future Writers’ Award
in 2020, and in February 2021 was a Poetry Business
digital Poet in Residence. Twitter: @helen_bowell
Connor Byrne is a poet from
Brighton, now living in London.
They write a lot about being queer
and trans, and their relationship to
others and the world.
Troy Cabida (he/him) is a
Filipino poet, producer and
library assistant based in southwest
London. His recent poems
have appeared in TAYO, harana,
MacMillan and Bath Magg. A
former member of the Barbican
Young Poets and Roundhouse
Poetry Collective, he currently works as a producer
for London open mic night Poetry and Shaah and is
co-founder of Liwayway Kolektibo, an arts and culture
network providing space for UK-based Filipino/a/x
creatives. His debut pamphlet, War Dove, was
published by Bad Betty Press in 2020.
Courtney Conrad is a Jamaican
poet. She is a member of Malika’s
Poetry Kitchen. She was the
Roundhouse Slam runner-up
and a BBC Fringe Slam finalist.
She is an alumna of the Obsidian
Foundation Retreat. She has
performed at Glastonbury Festival
and StAnza Festival. Courtney has been published in
Bad Betty Press’ Field Notes on Survival anthology,
Birmingham Literary Journal and The White Review.
She was shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize
2020 and longlisted for the Women Poets’ Prize 2020
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Jacob Constable is a Black British
Caribbean writer, and has been
writing poems since he was 12. His
work deals with the vast-smallness
of the human experience,
and is influenced by a love
of languages, his studies in
psychotherapy, and the childhood
dream of becoming an astronaut.
Nailah Dossa is a writer, poet
and model from London. She is
a Roundhouse Poetry alumnus
and has an degree in English
Literature. She has worked with
brands including L’Oréal, Zalando,
H&M and has performed at the
Roundhouse, Birmingham and
BBC Words First. Her poetry explores femininity, the
South Asian diaspora and themes of love and loss. She
is currently working on her first pamphlet that will be
out later this year.
Oakley Flanagan a writer and
poet. As a playwright ‘This Queer
House’; (OPIA Collective, Vault
Festival). Their poetry appears in
Bath Magg, Poetry London, Under
the Radar and Wasafiri, as well as
anthologised work for 3 of Cups
Press, Hachette, Orion and Verve
Poetry Press. Oakley was a winner of TLC’s Queer Reads
scheme 2020 for their novel in progress ‘Quercus’.
Niamh Haran is a queer poet
from North London. Some of their
poems appear in Bath Magg, Ink
Sweat & Tears, The Interpreter’s
House and Perverse.
Rosanna Hildyard is an editor,
writer and translator from North
Yorkshire. Her poetry has recently
been published by Banshee,
Modern Poetry in Translation
and the Crested Tit Collective.
Her pamphlet of short stories,
Slaughter, will be published by
Broken Sleep Books in March 2021.
Abena Essah Bediako is a poet,
singer-songwriter, model and
activist from North London. They
are an Alumni of the Obsidian
Foundation Black Poet’s retreat
2020, a BBC Words First finalist
and a current a member of
the Writing Room 2021 cohort.
They were also one of the speakers for the Channel
4 documentary Hair Power: Me and My Afro. Abena
has been commissioned to write poetry for the BBC,
Marques Almeida for London Fashion Week and the
Baroque at the Edge Festival. Their work explores their
personal identity such as their Ghanaian heritage,
queer identity, childhood memories and Queer African
36 Ancestry.
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Shanay Neusum-James is an actress,
poet and theatre-maker based in
South London. She is an alumna
of The BRIT School, the Obsidian
Foundation Black Poets Retreat and
the BBC Words First Scheme. Shanay
is currently directing Reece Lyons in
her one-woman show, LILITH.
miracle: i’m out here baby
Samantar Osman is a Swedish-born
Somali poet. He is a Roundhouse
Poetry Collective alumnus and has
published work on EastSide Anthology,
Sawti Zine, and FourthFloor Poetry
Series. Samantar has performed
at the Roundhouse, Birmingham
Hippodrome, Kings College London,
University of London and more. His poetry explores
fatherhood, masculinity, Black working-class culture, and
more. Samantar is currently a student at SOAS, University
of London, doing a BA in African Studies.
The Repeat Beat Poet is Peter
deGraft-Johnson, a Hip Hop
Poet, emcee, and broadcaster.
He is the co-founder of Hip Hop
poetry night Pen-Ting, hosts the
multi-award nominated Lunar
Poetry Podcast which is archived
in the British Library, his work is
published by Bad Betty Press & Magma Poetry,
and he is an Obsidian Foundation fellow.
Kirk-Ann Roberts is a Caribbeanborn,
London-based writer and
theatre director. A Roundhouse
Resident Artist and graduate of
the Young Vic Directors
programme. Innovation, honesty
and inclusivity are at the heart
of Kirk-Ann’s work which often
focuses on themes of identity and home.
Tanaka is a slam winning, multipublished,
international spoken
word performer. He is a black,
queer artist whose poems cross
leaps and boundaries throughout
his identity.
Cover illustration: Pattern created from floor plans
of the Paul Hamlyn Roundhouse Studios for young
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creatives aged 11-25 years old.
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